Exploring India with Thomas Cook

bhavna on February 11, 2018

I call myself a desi very proudly, but sadly I haven’t seen even half of the des that I so easily call my own. My yearly trip to India is an expedition between Mumbai and Delhi, where I go crazy meeting relatives, trying to stuff my face with as much food as I can, falling sick, complaining about the traffic, the noise and everything under the sun. I usually go back to Australia a little worse for wear, swearing to never return to India only to start missing it in just a few days and then desperately waiting for the next time I go back home.

However, this year I decided to change things a bit and instead of the usual pit stops, I thought of exploring and discovering a new city in India. After a lot of speculation, I decided to go to Jaipur and Jodhpur both culture & history-rich cities with food to die for. While I have been to Jodhpur before, I have not really seen anything there, and Jaipur is a city I have only read about in books. I also decided to travel with my mother to make the trip memorable and because we had not traveled together on our own before (Visiting Delhi for summer holidays when I was young doesn’t count).

And living out of India I felt a little lost on what to do, where to go and places to see. So I contacted Thomas Cook who planned the entire trip for me. From enuring that my stay was booked in the nice and comfortable Park Regis hotel in Jaipur, which was away from the bustling markets yet close enough to all the places of intrest that I wanted to see and explore. I had a car to drive me around with a local driver who knew the city, places to see, what to eat, what to avoid etc.

As someone who does everything on her own, it was oddly reassuring to have the team from Thomas Cook, arrange everything for me. It also was a blessing in disguise as I fell sick as a dog the minute I landed in Jaipur . So between a mother who was on tenterhooks all the time about something going wrong and a nose that had a mind of its own, I really did manage to have a great time.